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Houston’s
Song, From the Heart
By Felicia Johnson-Leblanc
 Song
- could a singer have been born with a more fitting name? Maybe
“Music”? No, it’s not pretty enough. Or “Lyric”? I
actually know a rapper with that name; it’s more suited to the
spirit of an MC. Song. It’s perfect.
A song is the embodiment of the
singer’s emotions and thoughts, all that she tries to convey to
her audience. It moves you to dance, cry, light fires. It brings
messages of love and happiness, joy and pain. It can be a call to
revolution, a praise song to the Most High, or, all too often, a
lover’s lament.
Very few singers can reach an
audience with the intensity of the great ones. Even fewer get the
chance to reach the masses with their message. And among those lucky
few, who can claim bragging rights to such a dope name? A little
dread-locked girl from H-Town by way of Motown named Song Williamson
holds that title, and her debut album In the Fireplace has
heads all over the country reeling in the wake of her powerful
voice.
Song’s music is mellow and
rhythmic. Her voice, a strong alto with mountainous ranges, is the
blues revisited. The songs she sings are of the new school of R&B—funky,
eclectic, deep. Her style will remind you of Erykah or Chaka from
Rufus days, but the way her voice resonates throughout the room with
feeling makes Phyllis Hyman the only suitable comparison.
I first heard Song in 1995 in the
back room of the Magic Bus, a hole-in-the-wall hip hop club in
midtown Houston. She was fronting
for a poetry performance group called Roots Collective and she
brought tears to folks’ eyes with her soulful wailing. Soon after
that, she hooked up with Houston rap producer Clay “Fresh” James
and the newly formed Bayswater Records. Fresh helped season Song’s
talent, providing music that is melodic and thoughtful, smooth and
mellifluous, a perfect background for the power of Song’s
incredible lyrics.
“I’m a lover of live band music,
you know,” Song told me when we talked over the phone about her
new album. “I love the added excitement. Magical stuff happens
when you get a bunch of people together. To me, music is a
connection to God, so it’s very spiritual when there’s a bunch
of people on stage and they’re exchanging that kind of energy.
Like whew, you know? Like you do in church you say wow and thinking
about it right now makes me say that, ooh yeah! I like what
D’Angelo’s doing right now. He’s bringing back all the old
funk styles. That live band, you know? When people start hearing it
and seeing it again, people understand why people love music.”
Song was born in Detroit, and moved
to Houston at the age of 14, where the culture shock of the South
hit hard. “I learned Houston on two different levels,” she said.
“I thought Houston was multi-diverse – Indian, Asian, Mexican. I
met a lot of poets from those [cultures] and I had this thing:
‘Music is universal,’ ‘Poetry is universal.’ That taught me
a lot,” she said. “It cultivated my personality.” Song left
Houston for Austin, where she attended Huston-Tillotson University.
It was there, while working at a club that she fell in love with the
art of live performance. “I was into law when I first got to
Huston-Tillotson,” she says. But hanging out with the musicians
awakened a latent love for music. “Once I got into music it was a
whole new world for me. When I got back to Houston, I was full of
energy. I was ready.”
Felicia
Johnson-Leblanc is a Houston-based arts writer.
Photo courtesy of Bayswater Records.
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